Numerous types of wireless communication devices are used throughout the world each day, including devices such as cellular phones, pagers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and vehicle communication devices. Many of these devices use one or more types of communication channels, including voice and data channels, to provide a variety of services over wireless networks. Some devices utilize data encoding techniques to communicate both voice and data information over a voice channel, while other devices must use a data channel to send data information.
Telematics-equipped vehicles may communicate with a call center and, at times, the call center may request information from those vehicles. If the call center sends out messages that elicit responses from a large number of telematics-equipped vehicles, then there could be a significant increase in wireless traffic if all of those vehicles were to respond at once. Accommodating such a significant influx in wireless traffic, albeit a temporary influx, can add cost, complexity and strain to the wireless system.